Tidbits for grocery shopping corner cutting for students with student loan budgets
Tidbits for grocery shopping corner cutting for students with student loan budgets
When you are a student who is looking to achieve a collage or university education, you have to learn how to “cut corners” on the expenses that you will be having, especially if you are currently enjoying the benefits of a student loan. One of such “corner cutting” are groceries.
Whether you are on a dorm room by yourself or with other people or sharing an apartment, you will need to make your own personal shopping for things such as toilet paper, shampoo, laundry soap and things like that.
Here are some pointers that might prove beneficial when dealing with corner cutting and grocery shopping.
• Do not check only price, check net weights, as well as ingredients. In cleaning products, this is particularly important since it is how you can determine whether a product has a bleach or ammonia base. In other cases, the price might seem lower, but the net weight is also lower, so it ends up costing more.
• Do not plunge into buying brand-free products, these products might seem cheaper but they lack the efficiency of the brand products, therefore, you will need twice as much to get the same result of a single use of a brand product. Of course, there are cases where they are actually good.
To see how to determine whether a brand-free product is actually good or not can only be done upon experience, but being a student with a student loan budget it is highly unlikely that you have the financial buoyancy that allows you to risk or loose the price of the product. If you want to know if they are any good, ask your parents or your family members to see if they had tried them and what results did they get.
• If the product does not perish or decomposes, consider buying the family size. Of course, consider that if you buy the family size product you will not be able to change the fragrance or any other special characteristics until the product has gone. On the other hand, you will need to crunch some numbers, sometimes buying the family size product will only “save” you cents instead of whole dollars; in such cases, there is no point in doing the trip all the way to the price market to seek these sizes.
• If your needs are low and buying a full size product (even if it is the smallest presentation) is still too much for you and your budget, get together with some friends or their families and go shopping together. Your pitching in with the tab will allow you to make an input or two on what they are buying and you will learn in turn also.